It was a clean break. The end of a habit that has, well, existed as long as I have. For the first time in my life, I don't have cable. Consider this more of an experiment than a revolt against conformity and consumerism (although it feels good to be out of the mainstream even a little bit).
My two motivators are money and time; neither of which I have very much of anymore. I had to be honest with myself in regards to time. Many a night I have stayed up late caught up in a marathon of Hoarder, Law &Order SVU or in a desperate attempt to catch up on the 98% full DVR that we've committed ourselves to. It has been several years, actually, that I have not watched much live tv at all. That saved time in itself by avoiding commercials, if you exclude the fact that I could have been saving infinitely more time by not watching tv in the first place. But now I can sit down at the end of the night and not feel some strange obligation to watch one of the thirteen back episodes of Oprah that I never had the chance to watch.
But I'll miss my time with Oprah - much like I miss lounging on the couch and flipping channels for a few hours on a Saturday. That's a luxury that kids have replaced; and I'm fine with that. So now cable is a luxury that honestly, I don't have much time for. And I'm happy to keep a little money in the bank account every month.
We are managing very well with tiny doses of Netflix, DVDs and the Internet. Gregory has the laptop hooked up to the tv and we are good to go! Yeah, we probably won't watch the Oscars or keep up with the local news (but hey! shouldn't I be reading the paper on the internet anyways?), but we'll see how much I miss it.
Like a lot of things that are lacking my daily life (free time, relaxing showers, eating a meal without getting up a million times, a full night's sleep) - I just tell myself... someday. Someday you'll wonder where all of the kids are on a Saturday night. Someday you'll buy quality clothes again without fearing that they'll be ruined by spit up or "washable" finger paint. And someday I'll have cable again, or maybe not.
Check out http://www.roku.com/. For a one time fee of 99 dollars you get a box that can easily stream Hulu Plus($8/Monthly) and Netflix($8/Monthly) to your TV. The System also includes free channels with more content added daily. Another nice feature is the USB port. With this you can plug in an external drive filled with downloaded TV shows or Movies.
ReplyDeleteHope all is well in Buffalo!
Nice, nice, NICE! Let us know how it continues to go. I am currently engaged in a battle about INTERNET in our new home. If we use Comcast, we automatically get the very worst of the channels. I argue that those channels are the source of unintentional TV watching.; the worst. We shall see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE LOVE LOVE my Roku box. The best $99 I've ever spent on entertainment. I ditched cable when Dale moved to Germany two years ago and have not missed it at all. And in my area, without cable we have no tv reception, period. So: Roku it is. Hulu works, too.
ReplyDelete